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Notre Dame Denies It Knowingly Risked Life of Student

By

Kevin Helliker

Updated April 19, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

The University of Notre Dame said Monday that it didn't knowingly risk the life of a student employee who fell to his death Oct. 27 when a wind gust toppled the scissor lift he was using to videotape football practice.

That assertion contradicts a charge lodged in March by the Indiana Department of Labor, which accused the South Bend, Ind., university of six safety violations, including knowingly jeopardizing the life of Declan Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan, a 20-year-old student and paid videographer for the university football team, was killed when a 53-mile-per-hour gust caused the scissor lift, raised to 40 feet, to fall.

Weather forecasters had warned gusts as strong as 60 mph were possible that day. But in a 52-page report released Monday, the university said the warnings didn't come to the attention of its athletic personnel.

Before the start of practice around 3 p.m., the report said, three staff members—director of football operations Chad Klunder, director of football video Tim Collins and head athletic trainer Jim Russ—checked online weather reports and saw that no gusts had been reported that afternoon exceeding the department's 35 mph limit for using the hydraulic lifts.

"Klunder, Collins and Russ did not recall seeing the wind warning when they checked the weather before practice nor accessing the details of that warning," said the university report.

But Mr. Sullivan himself was well aware of the 60 mph danger, possibly because that warning had been sounded in media reports throughout the region. Before practice that day, he tweeted about "wind up to 60 mph…I guess I've lived long enough."

As videographers atop three lifts filmed practice that afternoon, the report describes relatively mild gusts—until the sudden arrival of a 53 mph blast just before 5 p.m. That gust sent Gatorade bottles airborne and caused the lifts to sway. Mr. Russ, the athletic trainer, and another staff member screamed to the student operators of the other lifts. "Get that lift down!" they yelled, according to the report. But when they turned to scream that same order at the third lift, "the lift was gone. Declan's lift had fallen," said the report.

Notre Dame has appealed the state report and the $77,500 in fines that it levied. But both sides describe their negotiations as cordial, and state officials have praised Notre Dame as cooperative.

A spokesman for Mr. Sullivan's Chicago-area family, which has deep ties to Notre Dame, expressed approval of the report Monday. "It creates a framework for the university and family to be able to help other organizations learn from this experience and hopefully avoid tragedies like this in the future," said H. Michael Miley, the late student's uncle. Mr. Miley said that to his knowledge the late student's parents had no plan to file civil litigation in the matter.

Even so, Mr. Miley expressed bafflement at how wind warnings that day could have eluded athletic-department officials. "I've been a pilot for 20 years, and it's hard for me to know how people don't know about the weather," he said.